


Monster

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [9]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, But I blame the prompt, Captivity, Community: wishlist_fic, Dark, Experimental Style, F/M, Horror, Major character death - Freeform, Medical Procedures, Mindfuck, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Prompt Fic, So much angst, Those Tags are Never Stopping!, Time Loop, Time Travel, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5438795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a girl in the cell across from Bucky's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

> For _yakshini_ who prompted the first line of this story.
> 
> Guys, guys. Heed the warnings.

+

How does a monster become a monster? It starts with love. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his. 

Her hair is golden and her eyes are dull. The scientists speak of magic in hushed whispers, draw her blood into clinking bottles and never meet her defiant gaze. 

She tells him her name is Buffy and laughs when he tells her his is Bucky. 

“Matchie, matchie,” she sing-songs and when one of the guards tells her to shut up, she angers him enough to be stupid and then breaks his neck against the bars.

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and she shares her food with him.

“What year is it?” she asks, one day, idly. His stump is aching from the cold of the cells and if he hears anymore Russian yelled at him today, he will scream.

It wouldn’t be the first time. 

“1945,” he tells her. “I think. How long have you been here?”

“Minus seventy years,” she mutters with a shrug, rubbing at where needle marks should be littering her skin.

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and every time a guard gets too close, every time a shackle isn’t tight enough or the drugs not strong enough, she kills someone. 

A broken neck, most of the time. Once, Bucky watches her rip out a throat with her bare hands. 

“Never kill a human,” she explained, staring at the blood on her too thin fingers. “That was the rule.”

He wishes he could hug her. 

“Rules don’t really apply anymore, do they?” She kills them out of spite, out of hate and a thirst for revenge for all the things they do to her. It’s not for escape, or for any higher purpose. She just can’t stand to leave them alive. Rules have nothing to do with what this place is turning them into.

She looks at him, gratitude in her eyes. “No. Not really.”

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and today, he can’t remember her name for all the drugs in his system. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and he tells her about a skinny punk from Brooklyn who couldn’t fight worth shit but held his liquor like a pro. 

She laughs until her throat, already raw from screaming, gives out. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and she looks at him with worried green eyes and for a moment, he thinks they should be blue. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and he has an arm made of metal and she says, “Jesus Christ, Buck, what have they done to you?”

He shrugs and half-enjoys the searing agony down his spine. It reminds him he’s alive. “Hey, I can clap again,” he jokes, tries for levity.

She doesn’t find it funny. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and today, they lie on cold steel tables side by side, her blood pumped straight into his veins and he can feel himself getting stronger and sicker at the same time, can hear the lab coats muttering about immunity and healing and physical peak condition. 

By the end of it, he feels like a newborn god and the guards have to carry her back to her cell, where they dump her like a sack of bones.

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and he can’t remember her name again.

Or his own. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and she says, “I thought my friends were coming for me, for a while. But it’s not like google maps knows where to find me.”

It makes no sense, but through the throbbing in his head and the burning in his veins, he answers, “Stevie thinks I’m dead.”

It’s the only comfort he has. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his.

Today, they cleaned them both up and put them on training mats. “Fight,” they said.

And they fight. 

She is faster than him and stronger and better and she almost breaks his arm twice and his leg three times before refusing to go another round. 

The guards shock her with their strange, glowing weapons and order her not to stop the next time. 

Later, nursing broken ribs, Bucky asks why she hasn’t broken out of here already.

She shakes her head and curls into the far corner. He listens to her cry herself to sleep. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and her face – 

+

She says his name is Bucky. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and her face is pale and too thin and she says his name is Bucky and hers is Buffy and she needs him to snap out of it. 

+

There is a girl.

There is a girl. 

There is a girl. 

+

Why does she matter?

+

Who is she?

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and her eyes are – 

\- blue – 

\- her name is – 

\- she is – 

\- “Bucky!” – 

\- the mission is – 

\- “Snap out of it!”

Her name is Buffy and she’s from the future. 

“Still no flying cars?”

“No,” she sobs, relief clinging to the single word. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and she says, “You don’t get to leave me, you dumb jerk.”

Yes, Ma’am.

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and he has never touched her except when they hurt each other. 

And still, and still, she is the one who keeps pulling him back and back and back. 

It’s only a matter of time until they figure it out. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his.

She keeps telling him tall tales.

“One time there was this troll, right, and it had a hammer and I think Anya had an affair with it once – the troll, not the hammer, but anyway…”

“And you’d love modern TV, I swear, it’s full of stupid people doing stupid things and you can just sit on your couch, eat popcorn and watch them making fools of themselves.”

“You should have seen the fugly demon that landed me here. We spent weeks trying to track it down and suddenly there it was, right in Times Square and I barely managed to get Wills out of the way before it, like, zapped me across time and space, or something. I felt very Doctor Who and if you tell Andrew I said that, I will hurt you.

And then, “My sister has the worst taste buds in the universe.”

+

There is a girl.

There is – 

There – 

“Buffy?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing.” 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and he loves her. 

He knows it’s not really love, not the way it should be, not the way he loved Stevie. Loving people before was a choice, something he wanted and did. Loving her is like loving air. You have no choice because without it, there’s no you. 

Without Buffy there is no Bucky and for that, he loves her. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his. 

She loves him, too. 

“Your face is the last pretty thing I’ll ever see on this earth, if we’re being honest, so I might as well, right? Just promise you won’t cheat on me with a bloodsucking vamp whore.”

Later, when she thinks he’s asleep, she reaches through the bars with her hands and whispers, “I shouldn’t, though. I promised I wouldn’t. I promised you.”

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and she grows paler with every transfusion, every experiment, every cocktail of chemicals they pump into her system. 

As she wanes, he can feel her blood thrum in his veins and her strength settle behind his heart. 

He waxes. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and they finally figured it out. 

She hasn’t managed to kill a guard in three weeks. He’s killed four in her name.

He wishes that he could kill this one, too, the one that holds a gun to her head, her hands in shackles, her feet bound, he face bloody. 

“You like her, don’t you?” one of the scientists – ha – asks in broken English. 

Bucky balls his metal fists and imagines her the way she was in the beginning, gold and green. Imagines her breaking out of those chains and killing his way to freedom with her by his side. 

But her strength is inside of him now and he knows she’s kept nothing for herself. 

“I will make you an offer, Asset. A fair trade. You stop fighting us and in return, we give her a quick death. We have no use for her anymore, but we can make it slow anyway.” 

It’s not a trade because without her, he is nothing anyway. Without her, the drugs will rush through him and burn him clean and he will have no reason to fight them anymore. 

Without her…

“Do it,” she orders, voice suddenly hard where it’s been soft for weeks. Strong where it’s been fragile. 

She’s given him everything she has and they both know it. “You’ll be alright,” she adds, a sincerity to her like she actually believes that. Like she possibly could. 

+

There is a girl in the cell across from his and he loves her and she’s on her knees and she smiles at him and Bucky screams her name and – 

+

There was a girl in the cell across from his and he tries to hold on to her face, but it’s gone, gone, gone, blown to bits and he can’t remember her name, can’t remember his own, doesn’t know why he should.

+

There was a girl in the cell across from his. Why does that matter?

They have him in a room now. Tomorrow he goes on a mission.

+

There was a girl.

+

There was a – 

+

There was someone.

+

There was….

+

There was.

+

There.

+

Where?

+

Wha – 

+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+

Nothing.

+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+

(There really are no flying cars in the future, but her face, her face, her face. Her hair is golden and her eyes are green and alive and she laughs like quicksilver and loves like a war and her strength sings behind his heart, vibrating with the joy of being close to her again. 

“Our names rhyme. I think that means I’m obligated to at least go on a date with you, right?”

For that, only for that, he is glad that Steve found a way to fix his broken mind. 

To make him Bucky again.

For this.

“Promise not to love me. Promise never to do something stupid like sacrifice yourself for me,” he orders one night, in the dark and the silence and she chuckles and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“Like what?” she demands, rolling to perch on his lap, playful. Alive. 

“Like let yourself be kept prisoner for years just to keep me alive?” It’s too specific, too precise, too bitter on his tongue and he knows it, but she just stares at him for a long, long time, searching. 

In the end, she seems to find… something in his expression, because she nods, another kiss, more careful, more delicate. 

“I promise,” she whispers.)

+

There was a girl in the cell across from his and she was a liar. 

+


End file.
